OT: OS learning curves

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Patricia adds:
≪you have to spend time trolling the discussion lists to find
out stuff that should be in the docs, but either isn't or is so
scattered about under atomized headings that you cannot put together a
really workable how-to.... the user just coming to NT from DOS and W9x can
spend hours rummaging though the help files without finding a coherent
answer. ≫

I could hardly fail to disagree with you less.

What's worse, sometimes there isn't a coherent answer. Sometimes there's just a dead end, and where
it ends is that some apps just won't run under some hardware/software combinations and no one knows
why. As I say to my clients, networking is black magic; no one really knows how it works. But if you
chant the right imprecations, sometimes it will work small miracles for you.

No OS is perfectly transparent to the user, providing only and exactly what the user needs,
reliably. So we live with compromises and workarounds. The agravating thing about an update to an
OS, from w9x to Vista, or a switch to another OS entirely, such as OS X or Linux, is that the user
must learn a new set of compromises and workarounds. They all seem so familiar and similar in
principle, but the devil is in the details. I can well understand why people are reluctant to go
through that trouble every year, so they hold on to old systems as long as they work passably well.
I'm holding on to w2k, for example, after having made the switch to OS X (which is also not
perfect). I'm also holding on to a 1963 Volkswagen van, at least partly because I know its foibles
and I know how to fix it. I couldn't begin to fix a new car with all the computer chips they have on
board.